I thought I’d do a slightly more detailed coverage of the next four zombies I paint. I decided I’d take a picture either after a session or every 30 minutes during longer painting sessions. Usually, I don’t even paint for 30 minutes in a go, but today I had a few hours to myself and spent two of them to paint a little.

First I cleaned up my work place a bit, and rummaged through the paints to pick out what I thought I might need for the session. Some clean water, a fresh wet palette (with the lid on, so you can’t really see it) and a cup of coffee. I’m good to go!

After about 30 minutes of doing black and blood red, the four zombies looked like this.
Next up was the base coat for the actual flesh. A proper old pot of Rotting Flesh still does the job, it’s been with me for many years. In the picture above, the guy second from the left is actually not quite a zombie. It’s one of Bob Olley’s IC201 Skeleton Guard, however the sculpt (or cast) is so horrible that it works better as a zombie (I hope). After all, he’s painted more or less like a zombie in the original advert too. After another 30 minutes, the chaps looked like this.
Next up, I did the clothing. To keep the painting time down a bit, I’ll do all the main fabrics the same colour on all four. It won’t matter much when they’re in a much larger group. I’m going to do a rather light brown in the end, so the base coat is Tausept Ochre. Incidently, that’s what I also use for bone. After another 30 minutes or so, I had this before me.
In the background you can see a finished zombie that I use for reference. Also, the four pots of paint used so far.

So, about 2 hours of which 90 minutes were effective painting time and the rest was tinkering and general mucking about. I’m keeping this documentation up for the duration of these four guys, so I can get a better idea about how long it takes me to paint a few minis.

The next step is to base coat wood pieces and a few details. After that I give the metals a base coat, before washing the miniatures. Then comes highlighting and finishing the details. Yay. In the end I expect to have spent about four hours in total on them.

Just a quick update with the most recent addition to undead horde (and hoard!) – five old C18 Zombies sculpted by Kev Adams. Enjoy!

In the background, you can see a few terrain pieces I’ve finally finished up. Got them for christmas from my wife in 2009. There’s also a piece of an hedgerow I slapped together to see if it would work out. I think it did, so probably more to come.

The astute reader might notice how I’ve painted the skin of these guys a little bit differently from the previous five zombies. This have several reasons, but the main reason is my painting style have changed a bit since I got Citadel’s “new” line of washes. I think I like this dry look a bit better than the greener zombies I did before. What do you think?

Nothing fancy today, but a nice addition to the Stillburg undead. These are two of the good old Kev Adams C18 Zombies. Some of the finest zombies ever made, if you ask me.

The whole happy gang of undead shufflers. It’s not obvious that the lieutenant actually is a zombie due to his exposed skull but I’m sure we’ll manage. His posture is that of a zombie rather than a skeleton warrior.

For the next Stillburg scenario, a new troop type will be used; Zombie Lieutenant. They’re basically a low powered leader type used to allow zombies group moves. I’ve been thinking about how to represent the lieutenants and how to differentiate them from their mindless brethren. First plan was to use armoured zombies with a shield. Unfortunately, there are only two vintage Citadel zombies that have any armour to speak of, and I will need at least three. There are two candidates which could work; 074579/20 (center in the bottom row) and 074579/16 (right most in the bottom row). If anyone have either of them (would prefer the guy with the sword) – please let me know!

I’ve also finished up one of the militia men from scenario 1. It’s a bit of a quick rush-job, partly because I had to get him on the table quickly – but also because of him not being a Citadel miniature. It’s an old Metal Magic paladin, currently available from Mega Miniatures as a Guard Holding Halberd.

He’s normally acting as a name-less, disposable red-shirt kind of ally but could also work as a guard captain when one is needed.

I’d like to recommend Mega Miniatures, as their minis and shipping are VERY cheap ($1.43 per miniature, and a few dollars for international shipping) while reasonably nice looking. When I ordered from them, I got the minis delivered from the US to Sweden in a matter of days. There are some issues with the scale between ranges though… the Metal Magic minis are usually fine next to old Citadel sculpts (but some will look a bit small). The old Grenadier line also sold by Mega is basically 25mm scale and much too small to mix with Citadel.